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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29806389">Haunted</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FizzyOrange/pseuds/FizzyOrange'>FizzyOrange</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Tommy is gone crab rave, but seriously that stream was brutal and i had to give my take, fly high Mr. Innit, no beta we die like... well, tagged order of appearance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:53:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,221</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29806389</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FizzyOrange/pseuds/FizzyOrange</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>TommyInnit is dead.</p>
<p>There is no ghost.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>Or Dream, Sam and Jack process the passing of one TommyInnit.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Clay | Dream &amp; TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Jack Manifold &amp; TommyInnit, Sam | Awesamdude &amp; TommyInnit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>209</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Haunted</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>TommyInnit is dead and there is no ghost.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>TommyInnit is dead.</p>
<p>There is no ghost.</p>
<p>Dream almost expects to hear distorted pissed off screaming from the beyond the moment he lands the final blow.</p>
<p>There is only the sound of bubbling lava and his own ragged breaths.</p>
<p>Wow, he’s gotten out of shape in here, hasn’t he?</p>
<p>He’ll have to be sure to fix that before he walks out.</p>
<p>Tommy’s eyes stare unfocused at the ceiling of the box, and there is no ghost.</p>
<p>Dream takes in a deep inhale to get his breath back, smiles down on the lifeless idiot before him, and enjoys the silence while it lasts.</p>
<p>He reckons he’s earned it.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Tommyinnit is dead and Sam can’t stop looking for his ghost.</p>
<p>Tommy is dead, and oh lord, he can’t help but feel responsible.</p>
<p>He just. He didn’t know— he didn’t think Dream would ever actually—!</p>
<p>Sam tried to stop it, the moment he heard Tommy cry out that he had only two hearts and Sam realised what was happening he dropped into a sprint. But... but.</p>
<p>But he couldn’t get there in time.</p>
<p>
  <em>Tommy shouldn’t have been left alone with Dream to begin with.</em>
</p>
<p>What could he have done? The prison was compromised! Everything was on lockdown—</p>
<p>
  <em>It had been a week. You should’ve let him out regardless.</em>
</p>
<p>He couldn’t possibly have risked letting Dream escape.</p>
<p>
  <em>You’ve broken all your promises. You promised him you’d look after him. You signed a fucking contract and everything.</em>
</p>
<p>He had to put his job as Warden over his feelings for the kid!</p>
<p>
  <em>You knew what Dream did to him before.</em>
</p>
<p>Keeping Dream contained was more important than - than protecting Tommy.</p>
<p>
  <em>You’re a monster. This is your fault. You left him to die. This is your fault.</em>
</p>
<p>Dream... Dream had <em>said</em> he’d never kill him. He said he <em>needed</em> Tommy alive—</p>
<p>
  <em>You heard the way Tommy begged for you to let him out! How terrified he was!</em>
</p>
<p>Sam had to do his job.</p>
<p>
  <em>He trusted you!</em>
</p>
<p>Sam did his job.</p>
<p>
  <em>This is all your fault.</em>
</p>
<p>Sam leans against the closed portal entrance, and squeezes his eyes shut against the warm obsidian frame.</p>
<p>
  <em>You failed him.</em>
</p>
<p>The voices in his head scream at him, and not a single one sounds like Tommy.</p>
<p>
  <em>He trusted you.</em>
</p>
<p>Tommy is gone.</p>
<p>
  <em>He’s gone.</em>
</p>
<p>Sam wonders if he’ll haunt his prison like Wilbur haunted L’manberg.</p>
<p>
  <em>You would deserve that.</em>
</p>
<p>But Sam spends hours pacing the lengths of his magnum opus, his biggest monstrosity. He checks every nook and cranny, obsessively patrols every secret crack and crevice of the monolith he brought to life with his own calloused and cut and blood covered hands. He loses days inside, wandering his own self made labyrinth, searching for a Minotaur he’s already slain.</p>
<p>Daedalus never was any good at keeping his son alive, was he?</p>
<p>Tommy didn’t even get to die flying.</p>
<p>At least Icarus’ death was poetic and meaningful. At least Icarus chose to fly too high. At least Icarus was free first.</p>
<p>Sam gets lost inside the malicious machinations of his own arrogant making, and wonders what the fuck kind of meaning can be drawn from being beaten to death, trapped and scared and so, so alone. Spontaneous and brutal and without any reason. Unnecessary. Unplanned.</p>
<p>Avoidable.</p>
<p>
  <em>Your fault.</em>
</p>
<p>If only Sam had just—</p>
<p>
  <em>Your fault.</em>
</p>
<p>If only he’d known that—!</p>
<p>
  <em>Your fault.</em>
</p>
<p>Sam looks everywhere for Tommy’s ghost.</p>
<p>
  <em>Your fault.</em>
</p>
<p>It’s all his fault.</p>
<p>
  <em>TommyInnit is dead.</em>
</p>
<p>Sam looks everywhere.</p>
<p>
  <em>There is no ghost.</em>
</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>TommyInnit is dead and for some reason Jack cannot celebrate.</p>
<p>Tommy is dead.</p>
<p>Jack should be pleased, thrilled even! Over the goddamn moon and back.</p>
<p>And at first… he tries to be. He hears the news and runs from Tubbo and Ranboo and straight towards the prison itself. Jack pulls his mouth wide in a cruel grin, laughs that Tommy is gone! Finally! The server is free! Jack is free of the destructive little bastard! The undying cockroach beneath his shoe.</p>
<p>Tommyinnit is dead. Jack stares at the prison in which he died. Slowly, but surely, the smile falls off his face.</p>
<p>Next, he’s angry. It almost pisses him off how textbook it is, but he can’t help it. He storms around the server, up and down the prime paths Tommy once placed, travels from his hotel — and now <em>only his</em> — to snowchester to all the way back to the great crater L’manberg once was and then back again to his hotel in a furious loop as he rages over once again having everything stripped of him. Not items, this time. Not his home, or even his lives. No, no, this time Tommy and Dream had worked together to strip Jack of his purpose.</p>
<p>Weeks, he’d been plotting and planning to kill Tommy. Months of his life dedicated to attempt after attempt. His whole fucking identity was practically built around this revenge now. For fucksake he literally dragged himself up out of hell out of pure spite alone, for this. Killing Tommy, getting revenge, completing his arc. His whole purpose for being alive. Taken from him.</p>
<p>Typical. It’s so fucking typical.</p>
<p>He suffered and he waited and he suffered and he was treated like shit, and pushed to the side and around and to the back by Tommy time and time and time again— and all for what? Tommy died still thinking Jack was his friend— not that, his employee. His bitch, probably. Jack never got the satisfaction, the catharsis, of proving him wrong. Never got to see the shock in Tommy’s eyes, the look of betrayal. The betrayal Jack felt after being ruined and killed and reduced to nothing by someone he’d considered his friend time and time and time and time and time —</p>
<p>Again.</p>
<p>Again. Dream took it from him.</p>
<p>Again. Jack has nothing.</p>
<p>Again. Jack circles around the server.</p>
<p>He reaches his hotel again and thinks, that fucker better not haunt the place, too. The only tangible thing Jack still had out of this whole mess, was ‘The Big Manifold Hotel’. If Tommy came back from beyond the grave just to take that from him too…</p>
<p>Well. As Jack said before, that would just be typical.</p>
<p>As far as Jack can tell though, as he looks around his undisputed property, there is no ghost. No haunted hotel here.</p>
<p><em>Shame,</em> Jack finds himself joking internally. <em>Might have been a good selling point for tourists.</em></p>
<p>Then he feels a little sick at himself for his own dark humour. Which is stupid, because it’s Tommy. And he should be happy Tommy is dead.</p>
<p>He should be allowed to laugh.</p>
<p>Tommy is dead.</p>
<p>There is no ghost.</p>
<p>Tommy is not haunting this hotel.</p>
<p>Jack should be laughing.</p>
<p>Instead he looks at the signs Sam Nook last left for Tommy, and just feels sicker. A growing feeling of… of something bitter beginning to creep up over his rage. Beginning to fill his chest.</p>
<p>Finding he needs to move once again, he leaves the ghostless hotel behind. Haunted anyway.</p>
<p>TommyInnit is dead, and there is no ghost, but Jack can see the kid everywhere he fucking looks.</p>
<p>He walks in circles on the prime path. The path Tommy loved, the path Tommy built, the path Tommy repaired time and time again.</p>
<p>He walks past Tommy’s house, and trying to clutch onto the fading anger inside him, he storms his way in.</p>
<p>He rifles through all of Tommy’s items — it’s not like he’s gonna need them anymore!</p>
<p>(And Jack, naturally, has nothing.)</p>
<p>He takes all of Tommy’s crops.</p>
<p>(And then without thinking, he plants them back.)</p>
<p>He stares at the dead boy’s farm beneath him.</p>
<p>He feels all remaining anger drain from him.</p>
<p>The bitter in his chest only grows.</p>
<p>There is no ghost.</p>
<p>Jack still flees from the house.</p>
<p>Tommy is still dead.</p>
<p>On the run, Jack realises he’s made it to L’manberg. And from here, he can see Manifoldland. He can also see where he died. And where he crawled out of hell.</p>
<p>Jack wonders why Tommy hasn’t done the same yet.</p>
<p>Surely, if anyone was powered by enough spite, if anyone had enough energy, enough sheer audacity to be sent to the afterlife and simply refuse to make it stick — it would be TommyInnit.</p>
<p>But...Tommy is still dead.</p>
<p>And there is not even a ghost.</p>
<p>Jack looks out over the death of a musician’s dream, and thinks for a second that maybe Tommy isn’t the person he thought he was.</p>
<p>
  <em>Jack enters the server to be greeted with Tommy swan diving off the tallest tower in sight and landing not so gracefully in the fountain below.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Tommy smiles at him smugly, clearly expecting Jack to be impressed, dazzled, in awe of the kid’s sheer recklessness.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Jack, in all honesty, is fucking sopping wet. It’s annoying, but Jack will admit, also a little funny.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>So he laughs at his friend, “Nice one, mate. Very cool.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And Tommy leaps out of the fountain, and drags him around a tour of the server.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>He shows him a blown up ‘nation’ and a shitty looking drug van.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>He reads him their Declaration of Independence.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>He asks Jack to join him.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Jack wonders why it’s even a question, he came here for him.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But it seems Tommy’s developed some trust issues since they’d last talked, and after Dream tries bribe after secret message after offer of ultimate power on Jack — it’s easy for him to come to realise why.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And Jack does teeter. He considers Dream. He considers betraying L’manberg. Betraying Tommy.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>In the end though, alone in what he’s found is fondly called the Camarvan, he makes his choice.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Tommy is his friend. And Jack will choose friends over whatever power Dream can offer him any day.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And so Jack chooses Tommy.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>When he looks back at himself in the drug van’s glass, he smiles, finally feeling proud to wear the uniform bestowed upon him.</em>
</p>
<p>Oh. <em>Wasn’t.</em> Wasn’t the person Jack thought he was.</p>
<p>Past tense.</p>
<p>Whoops.</p>
<p>He turns his attention to Manifold land, and allows himself to admit the truth.</p>
<p>Jack never really gave a shit about that house, about his precious land. He wasn't pissed it had been blown up and torn down and set on fire again and again because of Tommy. He wasn’t pissed that he had lost all of his belongings again and again because of Tommy. He wasn’t even pissed that he had <em>died</em> again and again because of Tommy.</p>
<p>No, he thinks, as he remembers building that house in the golden days of L’manberg, Tubbo at his side lending a hand, Tommy running in and out; shearing the wood and leaving signs and generally being a pain in the arse until Tubbo had to go tell Wilbur on him. No. That’s not why he’s pissed.</p>
<p>He’s pissed because Tommy was his friend. And Jack would’ve happily fought, and lost, and died for him, again and again and again. Proudly even.</p>
<p>But Tommy never saw him as his friend. Not really.</p>
<p>Tommy saw him as cannon fodder, a fucking background character he could push around for laughs. He saw him as worth less than those discs, those utterly stupid pieces of plastic.</p>
<p>Jack didn’t matter at all, to Tommy.</p>
<p>And that hurt.</p>
<p>Now Tommy is dead.</p>
<p>And… that hurts too.</p>
<p>Because you can only hate someone as much as Jack despised Tommy, if you truly loved them first.</p>
<p>All that emotion and pain and energy has to come from somewhere after all.</p>
<p>Hate and love… they're just two sides of the same coin.</p>
<p>Just look at what Wilbur did to L’manberg.</p>
<p>L’manberg…</p>
<p>
  <em>It should never have gotten past that point.</em>
</p>
<p>L’manberg is dead.</p>
<p>It’s about time Manifoldland is too.</p>
<p>Jack doesn’t want anymore of these old memories haunting him, and he wants to finally, truly, start anew on this server. Without Tommy dragging him into wars, and getting him killed and surviving attempt after attempt on his never fucking ending final life—</p>
<p>(Well. Until now.)</p>
<p>Tommy has always been at the core of everything Jack’s ever done on this blasted server.</p>
<p>He wants to move on now, without Tommy haunting him.</p>
<p>Without Tommy.</p>
<p>The server without Tommy.</p>
<p>There is no ghost.</p>
<p>He burns his old home to the ground.</p>
<p>And he laughs bitterly, but also wetly, when somehow, some fucking how, the only thing that survives the wreckage is a single sign, long, long ago placed by Tommy.</p>
<p>It reads: ‘BITCH’.</p>
<p>All Jack can think, as usual, as ever: <em>typical.</em></p>
<p>He stares at the sign. Decidedly does not break or burn it.</p>
<p>Jack knows, deep down, that even with Tommy dead, even with no ghost of his roaming the world, it doesn’t make this server any less haunted by the kid.</p>
<p>There is no place on the DreamSMP not touched by TommyInnit.</p>
<p>He will miss his old friend regardless.</p>
<p>And as he walks away, charred and tired and grieving, if he sees Ranboo outside Tommy’s house placing flowers, he won’t comment on it.</p>
<p>He will just take a deep breath, and attempt to pull himself up out of hell. Up out from nothing. Just like he always does.</p>
<p>Tommy is dead.</p>
<p>There is no ghost.</p>
<p>Jack, months too late, finally allows himself to mourn the loss of his friend.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hey, I have not posted on this account for ages! Despite the fact I have so much written content for the DreamSMP. Maybe eventually I’ll get my shit together and actually finish my many many thousands of words of WIPs for you lovely people, but until then, I hoped you enjoyed this impromptu sudden burst of angst!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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